


Finding Peace Between

by MagicMage



Series: Joshua Shepard [8]
Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-02
Updated: 2018-02-02
Packaged: 2019-03-12 15:19:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13550067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MagicMage/pseuds/MagicMage
Summary: A look at things that happened during ME1-3 before Finding Peace, and before Kaidan and Joshua Shepard actually got together.Various stories (eventually).





	Finding Peace Between

Joshua had been skipping meals.

Garrus had noted this soon after he had joined the Normandy SR2 team. He would sit at meals with the crew, and watch Joshua take as little food as possible before quietly excusing himself to go do other things.

He had still smiled, joked, laughed, like SR1 Joshua, but there was something else. He didn’t seem entirely attached to the crew he was flying with, which Garrus didn’t blame him for, but there was still something else.

It started to show soon after they had met with Liara on Illium. There was a crack in the smile. The meals were getting shorter.

Garrus had seen the first time Joshua had started bending, when Kaidan had shown up on Horizon. The falter in Joshua’s tall, calm, peaceful demeaner. That falter had caused a rippled effect, that was showing now in the commander’s face. Horizon had been big, the jokes had abruptly stopped.

 _“Can’t you join us?”_ Had been the question that had broken Joshua’s stride.

Garrus knew it was selfish, from his side, to see Commander Shepard cracking and to have thoughts like:

But what does that mean for the galaxy?

The galaxy that was falling around one man trying to keep it up. Garrus had watched Shepard navigate conversations with the possessed caring of no one he had ever seen before. He’d seen every time had Joshua watched on to see if that conversation held up, and how hard he fought every day to make sure he held up to the things he said.

And the poor man, he was breaking for other people, under the pressure of the galaxy.

Garrus’s own shame for trying to turn the conversation of Joshua’s real issues into one of the galaxy that was always against him was what brought him to the Commander’s Quarters with a meal he had completely bullshitted following a recipe verified by Liara.

The man showed up to the door with a datapad in hand and Garrus rolled his eyes, because he had _actually_ _thought_ the man was putting down work to hide in his cabin.

“Garrus?” Joshua looked at him with confusion, his brow knitting together. “Are you here to eat food in front of me?”

Garrus hadn’t spoken to the man one on one in days, but he could still see how the uncalled-for situation was throwing him for a loop.

He’d never seen the man thrown for a loop before.

Garrus wasn’t sure how to proceed. He’d never been Joshua’s underling, they’d shared a respect for each other that bordered comradery since the day they’d met.

But also, how did one show up to anyone’s house with food in hand? Did people do that?

So he lied.

“Liara sent me a recipe about non-dextro cooking, and I figured I’d test it on you,” he said.

Joshua snorted. “Tali’s not here Garrus.”

Garrus snorted back. “That would explain why you’re the guinea pig,” he replied.

Joshua’s lips turned up at the sides for the first time in a while, and Garrus felt ease set in.

He still didn’t know if he was here to help the man or the galaxy.

“I know we talked about going to wrangle Tali, but I don’t think showing up at the flotilla with scrambled eggs is going to get her onboard,” Joshua told him as he turned back into his cabin and waved for Garrus to follow.

He did follow: but paused when Joshua returned to his desk and seemed to completely tune him out.

“Joshua.”

“Hmm?” Joshua jumped, just a bit like he’d forgotten Garrus was there. His thumb paused on the datapad he’d stopped reading as he turned around.

“I’m not room-service,” Garrus explained, holding the plate like it was bothering him to carry it. It wasn’t.

In the light over his desk Joshua looked incredibly tired.

“Shit, sorry.” Joshua gave his head a little shake and stood up again to take the plate from him, followed by a short chuckle as he leaned back against his desk.

Garrus noted the space between them felt guarded. He’d stumbled on to something Joshua had been trying to hide.

“When was the last time you slept?” he caught himself asking before it even finished processing.

Joshua gave a slight twitch of the shoulders, before suddenly taking interest in the food he’d been ignoring since it had shown up.

Garrus narrowed his eyes. “Joshua.”

There was a glance, up from a slightly lowered head. He thought Joshua looked like a human child who had misbehaved; a heavy sigh, and a slight headshake.

“There’s a lot to do, I have to spend every second I can trying to help stop the collectors.”

Garrus felt a great deal more shame that his first thought about Joshua’s cracking was that he had to fix it for the galaxy.

The words he’d heard spoken were not of a Commander Joshua Shepard who fought the geth with the council at his back. They were of a Joshua Shepard who had been abandoned and felt like he was doing it alone.

“Give me one of the datapads,” Garrus said, motioning to one of many the commander had on his desk.

“No, Garrus, it’s…it’s fine I-“

Garrus casually walked over and picked one of the datapads from the desk, holding it up. Joshua pressed his lips together, he was annoyed, and Garrus felt victorious.

“Encrypted?” Garrus asked, glancing down at the datapad and leaning on the opposite end of the desk.

“Of course it is,” Joshua replied, with a bit of actual bite in his tone this time. Garrus nodded, waiting to see if Joshua would tell him the encryption.

When he didn’t, Garrus hacked it, and sent the data to his visor.

“I’m helping,” he told Joshua, who narrowed his eyes at him for a second before setting the now empty plate down.

Realisation dawned.

“You did not just hack classified Cerberus files,” Joshua told him, as if it was fact.

“Fuck Cerberus,” Garrus replied.

Joshua inhaled sharply through his teeth. “Garrus the AI thing is listening at all times, _please_ do not-“

“I am listening, Commander Shepard, I am not broadcasting.” EDI chimed in.

Garrus felt a shiver go up his spine, he thought he saw the same in Joshua. The pleading violet eyes that met his told him all he needed to know about why Joshua wasn’t sleeping.

They had a staring contest: Joshua silently asking him to return the data he’d just stolen, Garrus standing this his arms folded trying to maintain the calm long enough to watch as the Commander slowly deflated, Joshua taking a deep breath that ended in a sigh.

“Fine,” was the Commander’s strained reply. Garrus stood in silence as Joshua forwarded him all the encryption data, and Garrus replied by deleting the data he’d stolen.

They stood in silence for a while, and then Joshua began snickering.

“Sorry,” Joshua mumbled as he went back to reading.

But Garrus had seen something playful in Joshua’s eyes for the first time since Kaidan had walked off on Horizon. He wanted to keep seeing it, that look made him feel at ease.

“What?” he asked.

“No, I just…I just realised how bad that was, forget it,” Joshua replied.

“Joshua?” Garrus asked, causing the man to look up from his datapad. Garrus held out his hand in jest. “Archangel, nice to meet you, I have a band of mercs, fire away.”

Joshua pressed his lips together again, and that was apprehension. Tentatively, the datapad was put back on the desk and Joshua took his hand with his brows raised in sarcasm. There was a reluctant grin on his face.

“Joshua Shepard, I’m pretty sure that it’s racist, but the idea of you cooking eggs is really fucking funny,” the man said.

Garrus snorted. “Okay, I’ve heard you humans call us “birds” or “dinosaurs”, but I’ve never bothered to look. Enlighten me, commander.”

Joshua took a steady breath as they released hands and went to his omnitool, fiddling around for a moment before sending something that Garrus immediately received.

When Garrus opened it, it was a picture of both a bird, and a dinosaur. Underneath was “they lay eggs”.

Garrus put on his best “completely blank to humans” face and looked at Joshua out of the corner of his eye.

He saw the nerves pass over Joshua’s face and wondered how he’d never realised how much Joshua communicated sub-lingually. Most humans didn’t, but Joshua’s body language was similar to how turians communicated.

He replied to Joshua’s communication with a species of animal from a turian world that resembled humans, underneath was “they throw shit”.

Garrus watched as Joshua opened the communication and began snickering again. Why hadn’t he never noticed their humour was similar?

“We have these things called “monkeys”,” Joshua began sending him a video of some monkeys in some thing humans called a “zoo”.

“They look like ugly, old, stupider humans,” Garrus replied, keeping his expression blank while his tone was entirely joking.

“They throw shit too,” Joshua told him, looking like he was trying to hold in his entertainment at their conversation as well.

“How appropriate,” Garrus put in.

There was a moment of silent laughter, as they both accepted the conversation they’d just had was incredibly inappropriate, and incredibly…important. Garrus wanted to know how they’d never been friends on the SR1, how they’d managed to keep to themselves long enough to live and almost die side by side, but they’d never connected.

They’d had this loyalty to each other, but they’d never bridged it.

Joshua was smiling again, not as relaxed as he had in the past, but he could see the spark in the man’s eyes again. Garrus wanted to know how the man keeping the galaxy together had managed to become the loneliest man in it.

The conversation continued, as they went back to their reading, into things like what Garrus had been doing in detail, and how the team had broken apart. They joked about things that had happened or could.

Joshua had managed to steer the conversation back to Tali, and Garrus had never been surprised by the man’s observation skills but he could see that the subject was wearing on him. It was wearing on Garrus too.

The crew didn’t feel the same without Tali, they both agreed on that.

There was a lapse into silence as the weight of things that _weren’t_ settled in.

And then, a small question:

“Have you heard from Kaidan?”

Garrus looked over, cautiously, to see that Joshua wasn’t reading anymore, he was staring at the fish tank.

“No,” he replied, telling the truth and seeing it tear a bit at Joshua’s neutral expression. “Joshua, look, I know he’s your friend, but-“

“I love him,” Joshua replied softly.

“Fuck,” was all Garrus could reply with.

Horizon was huge.

Horizon was so huge Garrus was suddenly blown away by the sheer anguish on Joshua’s face. Illium hadn’t done anything, Liara’s inability to join the crew hadn’t been the breaking point.

Horizon had been the moment Tali had walked away on the Citadel to go home. The unspoken words that had sent two people in two different directions. Joshua wasn’t breaking from the strain of the galaxy, he was breaking from the strain of the loss.

Horizon was the moment Joshua had met the same thing Garrus had met on Omega, the loss of his connection to something _important_.

He watched the man recompose himself, take a deep breath, settle into his commander posture again, and then look down at his datapad again.

“Go to bed Joshua,” Garrus told him.

“I-“

“ _Go_ to sleep.”

That same half-hearted glance that had been meeting everyone since Horizon met him again. Garrus became acutely aware he wasn’t going to save the galaxy by saving Commander Shepard, he had to save the man from himself.

“I have to keep reading.” A measured reply, from a man who was putting himself in a hole.

“Days on Palaven are longer, I stay awake later than you, I’ll keep reading, you get some sleep.”

“Garrus, I…”

“ _You’re_ not fighting the collectors Joshua, _we_ are fighting them.”

Joshua looked at him again, this time like he’d grown a second head he was lying through.

“We need you to be in your best shape, if we’re going to throw you through a mass relay,” Garrus added.

Joshua snorted derisively. “Suicide mission, eh?”

“For two dead men.” Garrus nodded, and they both stared off into the fish tank for a bit. Because the end was so much bigger than both of them.

“Okay,” Joshua relented softly. “Okay, I’ll sleep, but I expect full reports on all of those files.”

Garrus chuckled. “Humans are such slave drivers.” He began heading to the door, and Joshua followed half way before stopping.

“Yeah, well…Thank you, Garrus,” Joshua said. Garrus paused, and turned around to take the plate Joshua had picked up again at some point back from him.

“Anytime Joshua,” he replied calmly, waving goodnight and heading back to the lift.

As the doors to the cabin and the lift shut Garrus stared down at the plate, feeling a weight set in.

Why had the galaxy beat down the man who had been trying to save it?

**Author's Note:**

> Dedicated to my first patreon supporter, N7. It's not entirely light hearted, but it's the moment Joshua and Garrus finally became friends.
> 
> I hope you enjoy it, friend.
> 
> If you would like to support me, please leave me a tip:  
> [ Digital Tip Jar ](https://digitaltipjar.com/briarllywelyn?_external=true)


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